A list of failed predictions of the end of the world…

This comes from a secular source, but it includes information about past predictions (and predictors) concerning the End of the World, Armageddon, etc; along with two future predictions. A few may sound silly, but there were (and are, concerning the 2 future predictions) people who believe(d).

Its interesting reading…

A list of failed predictions of the end of the world, including a few current theories that probably won’t pan out

In a recent poll, 8 percent of respondents in New Jersey admitted to thinking that Barack Obama is the antichrist. As in, they think the president is the Beast of Revelation, he whose coming portends the rapture, the battle of Armageddon, and the end of the world as we know it. Thirteen percent weren’t sure..

Perhaps that’s why, even though Jesus admonished that“no man knows the day and hour”, so many people can’t resist making a pseudo-educated guess about the day and hour.

One of the more popular theories making the rounds lately has centered on the Mayan calendar, which runs out in 2012. The New Age claptrap is popular enough that it inspired Roland Emmerich’s upcoming apocalypse-porn blockbuster “2012,” due in multiplexes everywhere this November.

With a hat tip to the citizens of New Jersey, Roland Emmerich and the ancient Mayans, we present this honor roll of doomsday panics and false messiahs — a whole lot of past predictions that didn’t pan out, and a few more current revelations…

Name:The Münster Rebellion

Prophet: Jan Matthys

Date of doom: April 5, 1534

Revised dates: None

Apocalypse how?: The Second Coming and the punishment of sinners

What went down: Amid widespread religious and class warfare in central Europe, insurgent, apocalyptic Anabaptists had taken control of the German city of Münster. Their leader, Jan Matthys, declared the city the “New Jerusalem,” expelling or forcibly baptizing nonbelievers, and decreed all property to be communally held. Matthys predicted that the Apocalypse would come on Easter Sunday, and God would judge the wicked. That day, he led a small group of armed men against the army besieging the city. Matthys and his band turned out not to be invincible, and were hacked to pieces. The next year, Münster fell, and the remaining Anabaptist leaders were tortured, executed and displayed in these cages, which still hang outside the Church of St. Lambert.

Name: The Great Disappointment

Prophet: William Miller

Date of doom: Between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844

Revised dates: April 18, 1844, and Oct. 22, 1844.

Apocalypse how?: The Returned Christ

What went down: This might be the most touching failed prophecy ever. Millerism was an acutely eschatological strain of Baptism that emerged in upstate New York during the Second Great Awakening (the same time and place that produced Mormonism). Its founder, William Miller, believed that, with a close reading of the Bible, he could pinpoint the Second Coming. By beginning his count at 457 B.C. and taking the biblical “days” to mean “years,” Miller settled on some time between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. When the window closed, with no sign of the savior, he revised to April 18, 1844, then again to Oct. 22. But still no sign. Wrote follower Henry Emmons, “I waited all Tuesday, and dear Jesus did not come … I lay prostrate for 2 days without any pain — sick with disappointment.”

Since 1844, Millerism has evolved into Seventh-day Adventism, which tends to be more cautious about getting followers’ hopes up.

Name: The Great Mennonite Trek

Prophet: Claas Epp

Date of doom: March 8, 1889

Revised date: Sometime in 1891

Apocalypse how?: Our Savior of Uzbekistan

What went down: Following Claas Epp, a Prussian-born Russian preacher, a group of 100 families of Russian Mennonites spent 1880 marching 2,000 miles across Eurasia to Uzbekistan. It was there, Epp had told his followers, that they would greet the returned Christ on March 8, 1889, as a “bride community.” No dice, of course, so, like Miller, he revised. 1891 would be the year.

Epp died in 1913, excommunicated, miserable and probably afflicted with schizophrenia. Little trace remains in Uzbekistan of the Mennonites.

Name:Mrs. Keech’s Prophecy

Prophet: Marion Keech

Date of doom: Dec. 21, 1954

Revised dates: None

Apocalypse how?: A great flood, plus some aliens

What went down: This was a small UFO cult, centered around a Chicago woman named Marion Keech. It would be unremarkable, but for its service as the subject of a famous study. Keech claimed to channel Guardians from the planet Clarion, who predicted an apocalyptic flood, but promised to rescue cult members on the appointed day. A group of pioneering social psychologists, led by Leon Festinger, infiltrated the group in advance of the date. Their resulting book, “When Prophecy Fails,” showed the followers’ contortions to avoid facing overwhelming disproof. After several explanations, the cult finally settled on the idea that a new message from Clarion had arrived, with the information that the group’s own faith and goodwill had saved the world from destruction. Festinger et al., meanwhile, had laid a foundation for modern social psychology.

What went down: What apocalypse you believe in depends on what subculture you call home. The New Agers have 2012, the evangelicals have the rapture. X-Day, which fell on July 5, 1998, was the hipster day of reckoning, in the wholly ironic nerd cult called the Church of the SubGenius. (Sample: “There are TWO species of ‘intelligent’ life on earth. There are the mere Humans, descendants of some decadent primate; and then there are the SubGenii, JHVH-1’s prime breeding stock and descendants of the proud Yeti.”)

Come the big day, spaceships were supposed to arrive from Planet X, and whisk away active “SubGenii,” while leaving stricken nonbelievers under the rule of a cabal of evil clowns called “The Bozo Cult.” Though X-Day seemed to pass uneventfully, some Subgenii begged to differ. In fact, they claimed, Earth and Mars were switched decades ago, causing the prophecy to only seem wrong. Anyway, X-Day is now celebrated around the country with so-called devivals, events more or less in the mode of Burning Man.

The 1988 whiff didn’t stop him from producing another tract for the next year, or for each subsequent year for quite some time.

What went down: We were having such a good decade, surfing high on the dot-com wave, basking in a string of preposterous national cultural events. Something just had to go wrong. These computers — they were going to betray us, and at the very moment when the future would be now: Jan. 1, 2000.

Encapsulating the moment’s mixture of early-Internet silliness and, well, doomsday silliness, fevered chatroom types started using the abbreviation TEOTWAWKI. That’s “The End of the World As We Know It.” It’s hard to believe now, but people actually stockpiled food and water — and guns. Explaining her new arsenal, an Ohio woman told Time, “I know I don’t have to fear the future. I only worry about people who aren’t prepared.”

What will go down: The Messianic Jews are Jewish fundamentalists who also happen to believe that Jesus — or in their preferred Hebrew, Yeshua — was the Messiah, and that when he comes back he will kick some Gentile butt.

Apocalypse how?: We run out of days allotted to us by the ancient Mayan gods

What will go down: In 2012, the 13th cycle of the Mayan long-count calendar will come to an end. Now, thanks to the vagaries of the calendrical system of an extinct Mesoamerican civilization, we are apparently looking at a literal end of days. Some Twelvers hold that the end will come in the form of aliens ramming their planet, Nibiru, into our own. A modern astronomer might point out that we’d see a planet coming a ways in advance, but apparently, astronomy isn’t what it used to be.

Come the big day, spaceships were supposed to arrive from Planet X, and whisk away active “SubGenii,” while leaving stricken nonbelievers under the rule of a cabal of evil clowns called “The Bozo Cult.”

I believe we are in the end times because Jesus declared it during his lifetime. Either Jesus is coming soon for His body, or we are all wrong and the way things are going Christians will be overcome and killed. I believe that we will soon depart and the only ones left on the earth will be unrighteous gentiles and the remnant of Israel…being made up of 144,000 and two witnesses. Christ will destroy the anti-christ at His
coming advent after the tribulation by His brightness.

Acts 1:7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

Matthew 24:36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

scriptures clearly says no one knows the time of the rapture, only God knows, there are plenty of end time signs, but those who set dates are being disobedient, it is of the carnal flesh and of human pride to set dates. One example are the followers of Herb and Constance Cumbey who says the 7 year tribulation begins on 1 Jan 2007.

Does anyone else smell the scent of burning flesh? I say whatever will get one to recognize that God is going to do whatever He pleases…regardles and inspite of man. Who is man that He is mindful of him?

I commented about one instance i personally witnessed, when someone’s date setting shook another’s faith.

Some years ago a [sincere] member of a board i was on even had a count down thread going leading up to Rosh Hashanah that year, when he ‘knew’ the rapture was to take place.

Many people got involved and excited…

After the day came and went it left some of them terribly let down, plus one guy in particular, came back many months later [he disappeared from the board for awhile] and said he had went through a real battle with his faith after the rapture had not happened on the day predicted.

We can cause others to stumble–especially weaker brothers and sister in Christ, or young believers, when we get into date setting.

i want to share one more reason date setting is wrong, because some christians are more interested in that date than about victorious christian living or Jesus Christ.Because that is the date they can escape from all their personal problems and personal responsibility. Date setting is attractive to immature christians because they see it as a date for escapism from personal responsibility. Problems that they ought to overcome with God’s help but they wish to run from it.
What a great let down when that day pass and nothing happens, they will wallow in their complaining and depression. And I think that is a good reason why God make the rapture date a secret.

my personal view is christians will be raptured before the 70th week and taken out of tribulation(thlipsis). The word “tribulation” in Greek is “thlipsis” are used often in NT as our daily struggle with sin and the world, and daily trials we face.

thank PJ for praying for us for this evening evangelism, we shared with a few and some listened to the gospel attentively, and many rejected us, thats a typical response.

God is fair in all of the things he created, he would not allow things to be foreseen by an individual other than him…DEfinitely our lives will be taken but not the way we want it to be but by the way he want it to be.

The Way Home

"Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls....."Jeremiah 6:16

"Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set"Proverbs 22:28

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"If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord's will but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumption, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved. Do not suppose that the Gospel is magnified or God glorified by going to the worldlings and telling them that they may be saved at this moment by simply accepting Christ as their Savior, while they are wedded to their idols, and their hearts are still in love with sin. If I do so I tell them a lie, pervert the Gospel , insult Christ, and turn the grace of God into lasciviousness."

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"But there is further reason, and a pressing one today, why we should write upon our present subject, and that is to expose the modern and pernicious error of Dispensationalism. This is a device of the Enemy, designed to rob the children of no small part of that bread which their heavenly Father has provided for their souls; a device wherein the wily serpent appears as an angel of light, feigning to "make the Bible a new book" by simplifying much in it which perplexes the spiritually unlearned. It is sad to see how widely successful the devil has been by means of this subtle innovation." - by Arthur Pink

Sola Dei Gloria’s Position Concerning

What Is and is Not Replacement Theology?

"It is time to speak out because Christian Zionism has become a formidable and dangerous movement. By portraying the modern state of Israel as God's chosen people on earth, the role of the church has been reduced in the eyes of many to providing moral and biblical justification for Israel's colonization of Palestine. Those who oppose her are demonized. While not all Christian Zionists endorse the apocalyptic views of Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye, the movement as a whole is nevertheless leading the West, and the church with it, into a confrontation with Islam. Using biblical terminology to justify a pre-emptive global war merely reinforces stereotypes, fuels extremism, incites fundamentalism and increases the likelihood of a nuclear holocaust." ~Zion's Christian Soldiers

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"I feel I have a divine mandate to go and tell the people of this world that it is possible to be strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in training for the great tribulation, but more than sixty percent of the Body of Christ across the world has already entered into the tribulation. There is no way to escape it. We are next."

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Down in the human heart, crush'd by the tempter, Feelings lie buried that grace can restore; Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness Chords that were broken will vibrate once more. From the Hymn "Rescue the Perishing" by Fanny J. Crosby